You may remember me posting about our ladybug invasion a few weeks back. Well, I was in a bit of a “state” and picked up a few sticky fly tape things thinking that the ladybugs would be attracted to them and stick to it. I never read the directions and if I would have I’m sure I would have learned that they don’t really work for ladybugs. I put up two of them and out of the hundreds invading our house, the traps caught 4. I did manage to “trap” my daughter though! She tried on her dance recital outfit and ignored my advice to take it off as soon as we knew it fit. The result was that she backed into the “fly trap” and got sticky residue all over the back of her brand new dance recital outfit. Ugh!
How to Remove Sticky Adhesive:
First of all, the adhesive was left untouched for days. This wasn’t so much part of the plan, but more about having no time to deal with the issue. I’m not sure if the exposure to air helped or not, but as I said it was left hanging up, completely untouched for several days before I attempted anything. My first thought was to try duct tape. I googled to see what others had to say about removing adhesive and there were many ideas and suggestions. Duct tape was actually on the list of ideas, so I decided to try that first. My thinking was that the risk of damaging the jacket would be minimal with the duct tape, so I went for it. All I did was cut a piece of tape slightly bigger than the sticky patch and pressed it on firmly, rubbing it into the adhesive. I slowly peeled it off and sure enough it removed most of it. I continued to press and peel with the tape until it didn’t seem to be taking any more off. I cut a second piece of tape and repeated the procedure. This took about 2 minutes in all and it removed virtually everything. I did think that it would be 100% with a good wash, but I didn’t want to take the chance of it fading or the colours running before the recital. I hung it back up and decided it was good enough. When I went to write this post, I realized I had forgotten to take an “after” photo. I took out the jacket to take a picture and couldn’t find the exact spot where the adhesive was. I actually can’t believe this looks as good as new. It was a major sticky mess when she first showed me it and I thought it might be ruined. So, if you find yourself in a similar situation, you might want to try to conquer sticky with sticky. You know what they say, when all else fails….use duct tape!
*I would suggest testing this method on an inconspicuous area of your fabric first. Although this method worked really well on Eden’s jacket, I’m sure that different types of fabric could react differently. I saw one post that said the duct tape left the article of clothing a bit “pilly”.